Essays in development economics

This dissertation comprises three essays in development economics examining how environmental, financial, and infrastructural shocks shape women's outcomes in India. Chapter 2 examines how environmental stressors that raise the demand for women's domestic labour shape marriage decisions in rural India. Declining groundwater levels reduce access to nearby wells and handpumps, increasing the time required for water collection and raising the demand for female household labour. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in groundwater availability from 1975 to 2006 and combining administrative groundwater data with retrospective marriage histories, the analysis shows that groundwater depletion significantly delays marriage in women's natal districts, particularly among eldest daughters, while water scarcity in potential marriage destinations increases marriage likelihood and reduces dowry payments. These findings reveal that women's unpaid domestic labour carries substantial economic value in a setting where marriage and dowry constitute one of the largest financial transfers between households. Chapter 3 examines the effect of access to formal banking on marriage markets in rural India, where relaxing household credit constraints raises the likelihood that families can meet customary dowry obligations. Using district-level rules governing rural bank branch expansion from 1979 to 1993 as instruments for per capita rural bank branches, the analysis finds that an additional bank branch per million persons increases daughters' probability of marriage by approximately 5.5 percent, with no significant effect for sons. This asymmetric result, alongside an 8 percent rise in dowry payments and an 11 percent increase in women's marriage-migration distance, is consistent with an increase in the relative supply of brides. Access to banking raises school enrolment only for young girls at low risk of marriage and reduces women's wage employment. Chapter 4 investigates the effect of public transit expansion on perceived street safety in Delhi. Using crowdsourced SafetiPin safety audit data and the staggered opening of Delhi Metro stations between 2017 and 2019, the analysis estimates that a new station increases average safety scores within one kilometer by 23.5 percent, concentrated in pedestrian activity and visibility rather than formal security provision. Suggestive evidence also shows increased school enrolment near new stations, with larger effects for girls.